Video: Never Say No to a Potential Customer

Never let your employees (or yourself for that matter) answer a customer or client’s question with “no.”

“No” is a conversation ender and what you really want are conversation extenders.

Case Study

Recently while I was sitting in the reception area of Pilates on Fifth, an exercise studio run by sisters Kimberly and Katherine Corp, a woman walked in and asked the receptionist, “Do you have yoga classes here?” Instead of saying “No, we don’t,” which would be the natural response since they didn’t offer yoga, the receptionist said “We have Pilates, and Cardiolates. Have you ever tried Cardiolates before?” This caught my attention because it was not the response I had expected and it was very clever.

The woman then asked what Cardiolates was and signed up for a class for the next day. By simply finding a way around saying “no,” the receptionist recruited another client.